Have AI recruitment tools become unwitting perpetrators of age discrimination? Gen X jobseekers, of the generation that followed baby boomers, born, broadly, between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s, have blamed the technology for exacerbating prejudice by filtering out older, particularly female candidates. It doesn’t necessarily respond directly to an individual’s age, sometimes needing only to identify previous patterns of employment, such as career gaps or changes that may have influenced past corporate behaviour. Some women report they have been advised to “Botox” their CVs. Critics claim companies are missing out on serious talent at a time when many experienced people not only want to work longer for their own benefit but whose employmenmt is widely seen as potentially boosting the UK economy. The AI issue has been highlighted by the experience of an accomplished fashion editor with a glittering CV who documented on social media her fustration at becoming seemingly “unemployable” in mid life, as hundreds of job applications went unanswered. Her experience, taken up by the BBC’s Woman’s Hour, prompted a flood of similar stories.
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